Planet Earth opens with the literal shattering of a blackboard. In the poems that follow, Patrick O'Neill shatters illusions of self and others in his usual no-holds-barred style. He rejects being called a legend ( Between a Canoe and a Dock ) - legendary people are dead or might as well be dead - and the struggle to overcome the label revives his joy in reflection. The narrator of the poems is true to himself, however hard and lonely that can be. He’s open to blinding insights that come unsolicited from encounters with friends, family, lovers, and strangers. In the best of these poems the narrator tells compacted, intensified short stories-a son pulled back from the brink, a free-spirited niece who champions nature, an elderly uncle divining the meaning of life as he seeks water, a priest who cannot escape the confines of his faith, two childhood friends recalling the same baseball games in quite different ways years later. It would be enough that these are highly entertaining tales; O'Neill challenges his readers to more. -Diane Montz